Recruiting Intelligence

Our regular readers know our devotion to cross-cultural intersections. Today we focus your attention on the financial value of global.

At the NACUBO 2026 Annual Meeting, I spent several days listening to chief business officers talk about the problems consuming higher education: rising personnel costs, deferred maintenance, enrollment pressure, AI investments, student success vs. access, the loss of institutional knowledge as long-serving leaders retire, oh, and changing Federal policies and guidelines.

Important to note: just 13% of CBOs say their institution understands per-student program and activity costs very well as reported in Inside Higher Ed from their annual survey of CBOs. There’s an opportunity for you right there.

You know what did not come up at the conference? International enrollment.

Nearly every concern being discussed at NACUBO pointed toward the need for new, sustainable revenue streams. While international enrollment cannot solve every financial challenge facing a college or university, it can become a meaningful part of the solution. And given today’s pressures, international is just as reliable as any other options for revenue-sustainability being evaluated by your leadership.

The larger point is easy to miss amid headlines about visa delays, geopolitics, and fluctuating student demand: international enrollment drives revenue. And that revenue opportunity is not well understood by your business officers. In fact, your CBO needs to hear from you, and this is important: they don’t know that they need to hear from you.

Read on...

Chaos is costly. Clarity is half off.

This truth brought to you by The Economist’s latest flash sale. Sometimes an ad sums up a vibe so neatly. Maybe the ad just caught us at the right moment. (Um, thanks Meta?)

Whether it was the morning coffee or the marketing kitsch, The Economist's attempt to get us to subscribe (we already do) served as a good reminder of the cost of chaos.

Pick your tumult: visa whack-a-mole, Duration of Status policy threats, internal budget cuts, NSF decimation, demographic cliff, you name it. The disruptions of the past 18+ months have cost our industry its equilibrium, individuals their sanity, and certainly some enrollment.

The numbers speak loudly: 97,000 fewer student US visas were awarded last summer, driven largely by a near-monthlong freeze on visa interviews. (Canada, UK, and Australia have similar downbeats). Now, DHS may adjust the “Duration of Status” for F-1 and J-1 visa holders, replacing it with a fixed admission period of up to four years and dimming the luster on some students’ dreams of a US degree. And, if history tells us anything, it won’t be the last disruption our international student hopefuls and enrollment leaders will endure.

Despite the continued chaos, we have actual work to do. Handwringing be damned! Students still want to enroll at your institution. Time to busy your team securing the fall cohort by shoring up those leads. This is ground you know well.

Read on for insights from our team, including our latest addition to Intead, Lindsey Lopez, on what to prioritize now to bring your 2026/27 leads into focus and produce your target yield.

Read on…

How is your LinkedIn feed treating you lately? The algorithm has so finely curated mine at this point that I have a seemingly endless stream of academic news from a wide variety of “mostly” insightful posts. All good food for thought.

Mostly, I scroll and learn. Other times, I marvel at the patterns of folks trying (perhaps too hard) to get noticed. Sometimes I’m frustrated by the all-too-common story arc: take something well known and accepted as truth and call it into question. These posts often prompt reader engagement but act as just a surface-level contrarian view with little insight to truly add to the conversation. And that description is likely generous.

There are many of us in the field seeking insights to help us navigate these troubled times. Academia, the headlines seem to tell us, is under tremendous strain. True enough, and yet, a lot of those headlines end up being a whole lot of noise.

History shows us that troubled times come and go. Some institutions will fail to ride out the storm. Those that do make it to the other side sometimes prevail by what seems to be dumb luck. Others plan and adapt, giving their institution the best shot at future success. With so much noise in the system and so many distractions, planning and adapting require focus – a focus that helps you see the important signals separate from the noise. No easy task.

Two recent trips to DC for conferences (AIEA and WIEC) offered the desirable opportunity to meet with our community, maintain connections, share experiences, and noodle about what really is noise and what the truly important signals are. Really helpful, as so many in our field seem to spend a lot of time wringing their hands and falling into the rut of complaining. It’s easy to do when times are legitimately tough.

But that isn’t leadership.

And that is not planning and adapting.

Below we offer two valuable focus areas where we believe academic leaders can move the needle despite the turbulence AND two helpful resources in times like these.

Read on…

Nothing forces the drive for clarity like experiencing chaos.  

Good news in years like these, we suppose. The policy swings and shifts in student demand have tested every institution’s agility and fortitude. But for leaders paying attention, the volatility is forcing a refining of strategy and development of a sharper view of what truly drives enrollment growth. 

Churn happens in every setting. Promotions, departures, budget realignment, team and department consolidation.

Disruptive, yes, but hardly unprecedented – a common cycle typically prompted by fiscal changes and then the disruptions ripple out from there. 

And yet, change rarely feels routine. Especially at the scale we are experiencing right now.

Still, your programs need promotion, your Deans have their own priorities, and everyone knows that your important leadership chair is about to turn over (you know the one, right?).

What is an enrollment team to do? Do you launch a new marketing campaign now, or wait? What if today’s A, B, and C priorities become tomorrow’s D, E, and F because the new leader coming in 4 or 5 months will have their own ideas.

And what happens in the meantime as you try to sort it all out? Stasis.  

So often, teams sit on their hard-won budgets, waiting for stability and clarity. An approach, for sure, but not a good one. Doing nothing isn’t leadership (too blunt?) – and doing nothing will do nothing to advance your yield or deliver your next class.

We all know there are legitimate excuses for not hitting your numbers. Yet we see this stasis mode all the time. And yet...

What your enrollment team needs in times of ambiguity: smart bets and clarity. 

The never-ending quest for content that helps you move the needle. This year that means a serious focus on ideas and tools your enrollment team can use to adapt to the opportunities out there and reach enrollment goals. The pressure our clients and so many others are under right now feels daunting, to say the least. Our goal: help keep them (and you) focused on effective recruitment and retention.  

In troubled times, we do not sit on our hands. There are always actions we can take despite the challenges that throw us off our original game plan. 

During a recent staff meeting, it occurred to us: over the past 15 years the Intead team has given more than 100 conference presentations. That’s a lot of higher edu conferences! And if there’s one theme that runs through them all, it’s change. 

(We like to think another theme running through them all is innovative use of data leading to valuable enrollment insights, but those of you who have been in the sessions can be the judge of that).

Five years ago, Covid “changed everything.” Mask mandates and travel restrictions arrived so suddenly, they still feel within uncomfortable reach. While those disruptions have mostly passed –  some effects stuck. Think: hybrid work, remote classes.  

And yet, at a NAFSA session on enrollment marketing earlier this year, when a fellow attendee remarked with dismay, “My school is doing all the same things we did before Covid. But everything has changed…” We couldn’t help but wonder, has it? 

Unlike most of his peers, my son (it’s Carrie talking here) applied to just two higher ed institutions. He got into both. Accepted both. Put down a deposit on both. Will attend just one. And so, he’s part of the admissions problem.  

Our colleague (and contributor to today’s post) Jon Boeckenstedt, retiring vice provost of enrollment management at Oregon State University, explains it like this: A lot of people think yield is like planting saplings in greenhouses, where your success is highly dependent on things you control, like spacing, soil quality, temperature, water, etc. In fact, yield is more like scattering seeds, where you are hopeful, and you have some ideas of success based on prior years, but in reality, you're at the mercy of factors you have zero control over.  

As an example: Last year, UCLA received 146,276 applications. About 13,114 students or 9% were admitted. For comparison, just 4 years earlier, in 2020, the university had an acceptance rate of 18%. And a decade+ ago in 2010, it was 23%. Go back further to 2000, it was 29%. And wait for it, in 1990, it was just above 40%. A lot has changed in a 30+ years. 

Read on… 

Shout out to Q4 for giving us all something to think about. Cue the Chinese expression: "Better to be a dog in times of tranquility than a human in times of chaos." (宁享平安犬生，莫为乱世中人). Yup, got it! Right now, we are those humans, perhaps wishing we were dogs. 

Between the US presidential election and IIE Open Doors data, many of us are recalibrating our approach to 2025. Fortunately, we’ve worked through anti-immigration policies and lackluster international student enrollment numbers before. We’ll weather this. But there is work ahead for all of us.  

So, if you’ve missed a few of our Recruiting Intelligence articles, we understand. This post will catch you right up. 

Opportunities to Meet the Intead Team  

• AIEA in March, ASU+GSV in April, and NAFSA in May. We'll be presenting our latest findings with colleagues from Chronicle of Higher Ed, IIE, AIEA, University of Tulsa, University of Memphis, Northeastern, and others. Let us know  if you want to connect at of those two events. 

Bookmark this: Intead’s Resource Center 
Access 800+ articles, slides decks, reports with relevant content on any topic important to enrollment management and student recruiting.  Check it out.

Relying on our experience working with a wide range of institutions, public and private, over the past 15 years (and the guidance from David’s book), we have helped admissions leaders identify the admissions pain points that drive students away rather than drawing them closer in. Importantly, this fascinating day-long exercise uncovers opportunities to fix the problems and the improvement measures to track results. Ah yes, some good news. 

Process mapping is a simple idea on the face of it. Like any problem-solving session addressing a complex, multi-layered process, the key to success is getting the right people in the right room to wrestle the right questions. We’re sure you know just what we mean. Practical to downright critical cross-departmental conversations are too few and far between.   

IT, Marketing, Enrollment, Admissions, and faculty (at the graduate level) all play a role. Credential evaluation always comes up as a pain point (more on that in just a bit). Yet, when institutions bring all stakeholders together for one full day to critically examine how their roles interconnect, the clarity is remarkable. We’ve seen even the most efficient teams benefit. And by the end, everyone has a new appreciation for sticky notes and our whiteboard is filled with sound ideas, big and small. 

The litmus test for us is always this: at the end of the day, does everyone see a clear, achievable path forward? From the clear immediate wins to the more time-intensive improvements, a shared vision for a more efficient process will result. That’s the point of process mapping. Read on…  

We’re going to state the obvious and break it down. Because it seems some of your colleagues may need to hear this. Better coming from us than you.  Helpful perspective: historical data tell us that 30% to 40% of all US institutions see declining international enrollment in any given year. So, for your consideration...

First: If you are not seeing the enrollment results you want, something must change to produce new outcomes. (Someone wise has said: insanity is repeatedly doing the same thing and expecting different results. Apparently, it wasn’t Albert Einstein. Nevertheless, it holds up).   

Second: If you want to increase university enrollment fast, you’re going to have to put real money into the process. You’re likely going to continue doing what you already do because even though you are seeing diminishing returns, you can’t afford to lose them. So, new funds must be added to the existing budget.   

All obvious, right? Well, it seems folks need to hear it. But we have more to share here to help you get the numbers ... 

Opportunities to Meet the Intead Team  

• AIRC, Seattle-Bellevue, Washington, Dec. 4-7, 2024. Our team is here now with 3 powerful sessions on budgeting, pathways, and streamlining admissions processes. Come find us. 
• AIEA, Houston, Texas, March 02-05, 2025
• NAFSA Annual, San Diego, CA,  May 27-30, 2025

Bookmark this: Intead’s Resource Center 
Access 800+ articles, slides decks, reports with relevant content on any topic important to enrollment management and student recruiting.  Check it out.

Third: If you cannot access additional funds, you will have to cut something you are currently doing and reallocate those funds. If your leadership is of the innovative risk-taker mindset, you can stop doing some of your current, less effective things and put that money into the new thing. Your stronger results will be slow to materialize, and your leadership needs to stay the course (not pull the funding) when fabulous new results do not magically appear in year one. To maintain internal support, you must track your activity and report on the results along the way.

What you want with all the tracking is your ability to provide your leadership with the confidence that there is learning and progress going on that will lead to stronger results in the next couple of years. Know that your leadership is facing down a whole lot of criticism including daggers from across campus trying to remove your funding. The dagger throwers are expecting your plans to fail.  

Fourth (getting into the details): You have options when you think about innovating to produce new, stronger results. We review 12 primary recruiting options when we run our conference workshops on student recruiting. Today we take a quick look at each tactic with a careful eye on cost and flexibility.

Read on for our 12 recruitment option tips and perspective…